BREAKING NEWS - The PIPE UP Network

BREAKING NEWS

Kinder Morgan has been granted an injunction against protesters who have been blocking crews from doing work in the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area.

The company said the protesters have been interfering with survey and drilling work it needs to complete for its submission to the National Energy Board on the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Civil suit pending

The company has also filed a multi-million dollar civil suit against some of the protesters, seeking damages from lost revenue due to the delays.

SFU English professor Stephen Collis is shown near the Burnaby Mountain protest site on Oct. 29, 2014. (CBC)

Stephen Collis, one of three Simon Fraser University professors named in the civil suit, calls it a bullying tactic.

"It's really aSLAPP suit—a suit that's not a serious suit at all, but it's intended to shut up activists and stop them from participating in the process by gumming them up in courts and making them accrue excessive court costs and lawyer fees."

The $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project would almost triple the current petroleum product throughput capacity between the Edmonton area and B.C.'s South Coast, from 300,000 barrels a day to almost 900,000.

Kinder Morgan has said it would prefer to bore its new pipeline through Burnaby Mountain rather than follow the existing pipeline route through residential and business areas.